Barrymore's Josie Has Never Been Kissed, But She's Got Two Contenders For the Job

Surfing through the channels recently, my brother and I happened upon a movie that had just started. "Oh," Nathan said, "This must be Never Been Kissed." And so it was. So I asked him whether it was a good movie. "Oh, it's okay, I guess," he said. "But it has Drew Barrymore in it." This withering critique was not enough to dissuade me, particularly since I loved Music and Lyrics, her latest movie. And Nathan, for all his protests, didn't mind watching it again with me.

Never Been Kissed is a film with an improbable premise. A young journalist, Josie Geller (Barrymore), gets the first big assignment of her career, which involves posing as a high school student. She's young and girlish enough that this isn't too much of a stretch, though it seems like she would have had a little more trouble with this ruse, and certainly her brother Robert (David Arquette), lacking her professional resources, shouldn't have been able to enroll on a whim so he could look out for his sister. Moreover, she goes to the school without a very clear idea of what her article is supposed to be about, and weeks later, she still doesn't really know; presumably she's only still there because her high school experience has turned into the soap opera that's keeping all her officemates entertained. But what exactly is she doing during this stretch of time for the newspaper? All of her time appears to be occupied with this assignment, but what paper would invest all those resources into such a non-story, especially when at the end of it her article is shorter than this review?

So yeah, it's not the most logical plot in the world. Nor the most original, since it treads all the same territory as typical high school films. I can't condemn it for its glaring similarities to Mean Girls, however, since this movie came out first; evidently that film borrowed from this considerably. While sweet-natured Josie never quite turns to the dark side - befriending members of the top high school clique but not becoming utterly insufferable in the process - the story follows a similar arc. She initially feels awkward and is befriended by math geek Aldys Martin (Leelee Sobieski). She falls for Guy Perkins (Jeremy Jordan), a popular, hunky fellow who isn't as nice as the love interest in Mean Girls. She has a party at her house. She alienates her nerdy friend by getting caught up in the activities of the popular girls, albeit on orders from her boss, Augustus Strauss (John C. Reilly). She's declared Prom queen and makes a preachy speech about how people have to start being nicer to each other. Typical stuff.

But it's a cute movie. Barrymore is winning, playing up the charm as a girl who never fit in when she was in high school and is trying to get it right this time around. While she swoons for Guy, her real connection is with English teacher Sam Coulson (Michael Vartan). Their pairing would be perfectly appropriate under other circumstances, but he believes that she is only 17, so he's deeply uncomfortable with the intense attraction he feels to this mature, insightful student. At one point he even hops on the ferris wheel with her at the fair, which is very romantic, though it sets off alarms. It's the nature of this movie that in context, both of Josie's romantic interests are unsuitable, yet she pursues both anyway Her brother, meanwhile, not only finds a romantic entanglement of his own but joins the baseball team and dreams of being snatched up by a college talent scout.

In the end, pretty much everyone ends up with whatever they deserve, and we're hardly surprised about it. Josie finally blossoms into a confident young woman, having stepped out of the shadow of her traumatic high school memories, most notably being egged by her Prom date while waiting on her front porch in a hideous dress that looks like it was made of aluminum foil. There's plenty of humor in the movie, most of it pretty benign, and the blooming relationship between her and her teacher is very sweet, especially since he never completely crosses the line into an inappropriate teacher-student relationship while he believes Josie is a teenager. It's not the best high school movie out there, but it's a pretty entertaining way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon.